Reflection of the Soul
by The Black Sun's Daughter
Summary: Dæmons are a reflection of a person's soul, their true nature. A collection of short stories about individual characters and their dæmons.
1. Connor and Akela

**A/N: why? Because it's fanfiction and I can. If you've never read His Dark Materials or watched the film _The Golden Compass,_ here's the gist of it. Everybody has a dæmon (pronounced 'demon') which is the physical manifestation of their soul. The dæmon is almost always the opposite sex of their person, have the same amount of intelligence as their person, can talk, and can't go far from their person without them both feeling horrible pain. Childrens' dæmons can shapeshift into whatever form they want until they 'settle' into one form during puberty, and their permanent form is said to reflect that person's true personality. It** **is the greatest taboo to touch another person's dæmon, the only exceptions being the closest of lovers, as it is quite literally touching that person's soul and can cause them physical and emotional pain.** **This will be a collection of one-shots, each one about a character and their dæmons and why their dæmons have the forms they do. Hope you enjoy.**

 ****WARNING: there will be mentions of abuse in this fic, physical and otherwise, so if that bothers anyone, don't read further.**

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Connor was used to people being put off by the sight of Akela. Not many people had great blinking wolf dæmons unless they were seriously messed up in the head, twisted in some way. It was an old prejudice, one that died hard, that people that had wolf dæmons were off, lacking in the moral and emotional areas. Usually it was the truth, but most forgot that a person with a wolf dæmon might've also experienced a deep trauma or abuse as a child. And for Connor, it was a mix of both.

When he was younger, his uncle had liked to 'play' when they were alone, and he wasn't ever allowed to tell Mum or Da about it, either. Riley Norton's dæmon had been a serpent, a great python, and she would wind her coils tight around Akela's neck and chest, applying enough pressure to choke them both into compliance without leaving any lasting marks. Pakshara, as was the python's name, would slowly tighten her coils until they were both gasping, dizzy from lack of air, Akela too terrified to try and change shape. Uncle Riley would hiss dark things in his ear, warnings of what would happen if Connor ever dared to utter a word all whilst Pakshara slowly constricted all resistance out of Akela, not loosening until both boy and dæmon gasped out breathless promises of silence.

And silent they were. Connor went days, sometimes _weeks_ without speaking, and Akela wouldn't change forms for months at a time, and she never took the form of something small or cuddly, like other small children's dæmons did. Whilst his classmates' dæmons tried out the forms of rabbits and birds and mice and dogs, Akela was always something predatory, something bigger and scarier. She was always a wildcat, a puma, a jaguar, a coyote, a wolf, a bear, a wolverine…but never a serpent in any form. She wouldn't speak to other children's dæmons either, just show her teeth and growl at them if they came too close. She promised herself, promised him, promised _them_ , that they would never be helpless again, that she would always protect him just as he would protect her. But even so, Riley was still a grown man, and he was only a child.

The first time Riley ever hit him was when he was six, almost a year after they had started 'playing' their secret game. Connor had panicked and tried to get away, biting the man's hand; Riley backhanded him across the face so hard it knocked out one of his baby teeth. When his parents asked about the mark on his jaw, he said he'd fallen off the climbing frame and caught one of the bars with his face. After that, Riley was always careful to hit him where the bruises wouldn't show or restrain himself just enough to not leave a mark. Occasionally, when Connor tried to fight again, he'd end up going home with a split lip and bloody nose, claiming that he'd gotten in a scuffle with some older boys at school.

People liked to make fun of the way he wore his gloves and scarf all the time, and the many layers of clothing, but they didn't understand. He'd started wearing three shirts and two jackets because if there was enough fabric between him and Riley's fist, then the bruises didn't last as long. If he had a scarf on, then the pinning hand on the back of his neck didn't feel like it was about to crush his vertabrae to splinters. If he wore his gloves, then nobody would see the scars on his wrists where he'd pulled against the handcuffs attached to the man's bedframe or the ugly burns on his palms where Riley had forcibly held his hands on the bars of a grill after he'd called the man a maladjusted, neurotic paedophilic bastard; he had a good vocabulary for a six-year-old. Not his smartest move, that one, but the brief flash of fierce joy he felt at the look on Riley's face was worth the fiery pain of hot metal searing his flesh.

His parents were baffled, his classmates and teachers even more so, and soon he was avoided like a leper in school. Uncle Riley said that neither he nor Akela were ever going to amount to anything, that they were both worthless and didn't deserve to have friends, and the words became quite firmly ingrained in Connor Temple's mind. Even when he was an adult, sometimes he would still hear the echo of Riley Norton's voice hissing how pathetically useless he was.

It took eight years before anybody puzzled it all out. Riley Norton was arrested and sent to prison, but the damage had been done. By then, Connor was thirteen years old and Akela had settled into her meanest form, that of a lean, harsh Arctic wolf with thick black fur and dark gold eyes, nearly as tall as him and heavier, too. His mum had broken down after discovering the truth, and his father had never treated him the same after that, never hugged him or told Connor that he loved him, always distant, always reserved; John Temple's own dæmon, a beagle, had shied away from the great wolf Akela had become, as had his wife's, a wee brown sparrow. People thought it meant he was broken, but he saw it another way. Akela was a wolf, therefore, in a way, so was he—a lone wolf that'd been forced out of his pack and forced to defend for himself because he was the only one he could truly count on. But people still looked at him and Akela like there was something wrong with them.

Of course, it did come in handy sometimes, Akela's settled form. Like when his parents finally gave up and sent him to live with his gran. He was the new kid, and like secondary school law dictates, bullies hone in on the new kid, testing boundaries, deciding which category he fell into: victim, cronie, or ignored. For him, it was the lacrosse team. They were the sort who were born with a silver spoon stuck up their arse and therefore thought they were better than everyone who wasn't, who weren't exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer but would still go to some top-level school because the dean owed their daddy a favour. They'd sought him out his first day during lunch hour. He'd sat by himself, surrounded by this bubble of isolation that took the form of a no-man's land of empty chairs. Four of the lacrosse players had come right over, their dæmons also settled: a hawk, a mongoose, a crow, and a badger. They'd tried the usual scare tactics, which he stubbornly ignored, until the biggest one had grabbed him by the scruff of his neck to drag him out of his chair. Akela, who'd been lying under the table beside his feet, was out in an instant, snarling thunderously loud and pinning the boy's mongoose dæmon under one huge paw, white fangs bared directly in the squirming weasel's face. That day, Connor fell into a new category entirely: avoided. Nobody wanted to mess with 'the crazy geek with the wolf dæmon.'

It wasn't until he went to Uni that he finally managed to make two friends. Tom and Duncan were just as weird as he was, at least in terms of geekdom, conspiracy theories, and the like. And they were the first people who didn't see Akela and think he was some sociopath. They thought the lean wolf was "dead sick" and Nissal, Duncan's pudgy hedgehog, and Vitrial, Tom's red squirrel, would often sit proudly beside Akela, puffing out their chests when the dæmons of passerbys stared as if to say, _look at us, we're friends with a badass._ But he'd yet to meet another person with a dæmon as wild and predatory as Akela; the closest thing they'd seen was a copper with a large, bristling mastiff dæmon at his heels at a frat party that got a little out of hand at semester's end.

Until he met Professor Nick Cutter and Stephen Hart.


	2. Nick and Katya

Unlike most youngsters, when Nick Cutter was a child, he couldn't wait for his dæmon to settle. Of course, that wasn't to say he didn't enjoy the way Katya could flick from one shape to another in a blink of an eye, switching from a dog to a moth to a lizard to a falcon. It amused him, and it was wonderful to have a dæmon able to transform to whatever form they needed for any situation they were in. When he was cold, as was often in the Scottish Highlands, Katya would turn into a wolverine and cling to his back inside his coat to keep them both warm. When he had nightmares, she'd become a lioness or a she-bear and flex her claws in the darkness to warn away monsters. But he didn't want her to stay that way. When a dæmon settled in their permanent form, the shape they'd keep for the rest of their lives, it said something about them. Sometimes, the shape a person's dæmon took said more about that person than anything else could.

He could never have imagined Kitar, his mother's dæmon, being anything but a bluebird. Bright and keen and brilliant, full of song, light and airy, always fluttering around and warbling a tune as his mother whistled along. She was just the same, a beacon of light and love in his home, and whenever he came home with scraped knees and bloody noses, she'd hug him and slip him an extra sweet before supper whilst Kitar gently preened Katya's fur with his beak.

Nick's father, Alexander Cutter, worked in the fishing industry, and he always came home smelling like salty ocean air and fish, a scent that wouldn't go away even after he showered. His own dæmon, Stella, was a seagull. On the nights he got off work before Nick's bedtime, Alex would sit in an armchair that creaked at any slight weight with Stella perched on the chair back, and Nick would lie on the floor with Katya as she tried out unusual shapes, like a platypus or an aardvark or a lemur. "What do you think that Katya will settle as, Da?" he asked.

"Dunno. But when she does, lad, you'll wonder why she was ever anything else."

Nick glanced up at Stella; the steely-grey and white bird had her head tucked under one wing but wasn't asleep, merely resting. "D'you ever wish that she settled as somethin' else?" he asked curiously.

Alex lifted his eyebrows, then sat back and looked up at his dæmon in contemplation. "When I was a lad, aye, I did. I was an impetuous whelp then, though, true enough. I wanted her to be something big and powerful, like a lioness or an eagle, something other people would be right intimidated by," he admitted. "But I was discontented with myself then. By the time I was a proper man, I wasn't discontent with her no more. I learnt that the shape my dæmon had said somethin' about the kind of person I was. Stella, she's a seagull, which means I'm a bit of a seagull too."

"You like fish?" Nick had asked with the kind of guileless innocence only a small child could manage.

Alex had laughed uproariously at that. "Not quite, lad," he answered once his laughter died. "Not quite. No, I mean…I'm nothin' big or grand or splendid. Look at me—I'm not gonna be winnin' any beauty pageants anytime soon. But I'm a tough old sod, I am. I can survive anywhere and always find a bit of food an' company along the way," he explained, reaching up to stroke his dæmon's feathers with his work-callused hands. "An' your mum, well, she's a proper bluebird herself. A wee thing, aye, but full of song and happiness for everyone around her. So when Katya finds her own proper form, then you'll know the sort you are."

Nick contemplated that one for a moment, watching Katya as she tried out the form of a badger then switched to her new favourite, that of a pangolin, which looked a bit like a porcupine with a long tail and scales instead of quills, like a pinecone. "What if she settles in a form I don't like?" he wondered. He didn't like it when she looked like a rat, or any sort of bug, or a bat.

"Then you're discontented with yourself," answered his father, leaning back in his chair with a creak of old springs and wood supports. "Plenty of folk out there want a lion and end up with a poodle. An' 'til you learn to be happy with what you got, then you're always gonna fret on it. Waste of feelin', if you ask me. There's other important things to fret on."

Most expected Katya to settle in some sort of dog form. Dogs were the usual dæmons of working-class folk like the Cutters. The smaller dogs—setters, beagles, terriers, that sort—they tended to hold the more menial jobs as housekeepers, factory workers, and such. But the bigger canines—hounds, Dobermans, mastiffs, boxers, pitbulls—those were the kind of people that went into police and military. There was no hard-and-fast rule, but it was a common generality. Nick prayed she wouldn't settle as a dog. He loved his parents dearly, but he didn't want to work in a factory or on the docks. He liked science, evolution, and wanted to be a scientist when he grew up.

Often he would ask Katya what she'd settle as, to which she'd answer exasperatedly, "I don't _know._ It'll be a surprise for both of us, won't it?" At the time, she didn't know how right she was.

The day he turned fourteen was the day Katya settled. It was a little later than most boys, who usually settled at twelve or thirteen, but not abnormally so. He woke up with his face buried in warm, silk-soft fur. It wasn't unusual; Katya usually became something furry at night, especially during winter, so he wouldn't get cold. But this form was new for her: a leopard. Or more accurately, a snow leopard. The fur of her back and sides was silvery-grey, the colour of winter frost in the shade, dappled with black rosettes with a darker matte-grey centre, but her underbelly, throat, and the backs of her legs were purest white. At the time, she was nearly as long as Nick was tall, and she weighed more than he did. And the minute he saw her like that, it was just as his father had said, he wondered why she had ever been anything else at all, a feeling of _rightness_ settling itself somewhere deep in the heart of him, right where his link to Katya was tethered to his core.

Katya blinked her crystalline, black-rimmed eyes, which were a paler shade of blue than his own and almost silvery. "I don't think I'll be changing anymore," she said quietly, and he buried his face into the thicker fur around her neck, smiling as he gave a muffled agreement.

He had bounded downstairs with Katya loping at his heels, eager to greet his mother—his father had taken an early shift so he would have the afternoon free to spend with Nick—and tell her. Mina and Kitar had been startled, surprised that her son, such a kind, sweet boy, had such a large, ferocious dæmon shape, but nevertheless, she had smiled as the bluebird fluttered proudly around Katya as both boy and leopard preened. When Alex and Stella arrived home, they were baffled as well but still just as proud. "A mighty fine form, boy. A pretty girl and a strong one too," he laughed, ruffling Nick's hair indulgently.

By the time he went back to school, everyone knew about Nick Cutter and his wild dæmon. Other teens' dæmons often gazed at Katya with a mixture of awe, fear, and slight jealousy, and sometimes the dæmons of children in the younger years would dare each other to go up and touch the fierce snow leopard. The former they put up with in discomfort, the latter they endured with kindly forbearance. Once, out of curiosity, he looked up snow leopards— _rare creatures hunted for their beauty, solitary hunters that thrive in the cold._ Well, that fit him well enough.

Still, he and Katya were the only ones of their sort in his hometown, at least until he moved to Glasgow for college and met a range of people from all over the place, saw dæmons of all shapes and sizes. Still, they always held themselves apart, falling into the habits of their nature, and the older he became, the more alike he became to his dæmon's form, stubborn and solitary, fierce when provoked and wild at heart, not one to bow to authority. Traits like that held on through their lives, even as he travelled from dig to dig in all different countries, became first a teacher then a professor, and became established at Central Metropolitan University in the midst of London. Even when he met and married Helen, things were always a bit…off, even though they tried to deny it. After she disappeared, the pain of it nearly drove them both mad, sent them both into fits of snarling fury that sent every intern and assistant scrabbling for another job, anywhere and with anyone but 'the mad Scotsman with the leopard dæmon.'

The only real friend he and Katya had in the midst of the tempest left in Helen's wake, the first assistant he'd ever had that didn't bow out whenever they growled, was a crack shot of a young man with the most impressive tracking skills he'd ever seen, with a surprising amount of brains to go with his charm and good looks, and with an acerbic wit that could match Cutter's on his worst days.

Stephen Hart.


	3. Stephen and Thalia

Contrary to popular belief, Stephen Hart wasn't just some good-looking berk that just so happened to have decent aim and a knack for tracking things. It always frustrated him, the way that people assumed just because he was well fit and a good shot that he had nothing else going for him. He was eternally caught between a rock and a hard place: he was too sciencey to be strictly be an outdoors man or what have you, but he was also too physical to advance much further in the scientific world. Sometimes it nearly drove him up a wall.

There were a lot of things that people didn't know about him, actually, mainly because they never _asked._ What girlfriends there were had never asked anything about him, except maybe where he was from or what he did for a living. That was about the extent of their interest. Never a question about his parents or if he had siblings. Nothing. It cultivated the idea that he was a secretive person, which he really wasn't. He'd tell the truth if anyone asked, but he wasn't just going to go on and spill the details of his life for no reason. The only real bright light that he had in his life was his dæmon, Thalia. Another thing that people misunderstood about dæmons was that they were inherently narcissistic, and simply because one had a permanent companion did not mean one was never lonely or longed for new company. Stephen might not have been alone, but _they_ were. They were, however, used to being alone.

Stephen had only a vague, distant memory of his father. Jamison Hart had died when his son was three years old, killed when a drunk driver ran his car off the road into a ravine. If he really thought about it, Stephen could call up a vague memory of smiling blue eyes the same shade as his and a laughing voice. His mother, though... Sometimes, he wished he _could_ forget his mother.

Kitty Hart, formerly Kitty Dunne, was an Olympian, tennis and archery, that might've made Worlds had it not been for her getting pregnant. Stephen had never seen her play in person, but he'd watched the videos of her matches when he was younger. She hadn't gotten the name Kitty "the Hammer" Hart for no reason. Her dæmon was an arrow-sleek greyhound by name of Aeris, just as sleek and athletic and beautiful as she was. She'd retired from the sport when Stephen was born, though she was always well-fit, and there was no doubt that she'd loved Jamison. Whenever he and his dæmon, a playful otter, Nyema, came into the room, Kitty would go all soft-eyed and Aeris's tail would wag vigorously. Which is why when he died, it utterly destroyed her.

Stephen still remembered how she would come home staggering drunk, with Aeris tripping along behind her, and would totter to her room to pass out cold on the bed she and Jamison once shared. Sometimes she didn't even get that far and would end up on the floor of the corridor or on the couch in the living room. Most of the time, she didn't even bother calling someone to watch him, so it was usually just him and Thalia, sitting alone in the house. By the time he was five, he'd learnt how to make his own food and work the washing machine so he'd have clean clothes to wear, though the first time he tried, all his thermals came out grey and his jumper shrunk two sizes.

Thalia would always become something small and innocuous whenever his mother got sloshed like that, usually a mouse or a sparrow, trying to hide from Aeris, who would growl her way whenever he staggered past, sometimes even snap at her with all intention to bite if he could see straight enough to catch her. Kitty never once hit him, though sometimes she looked at him with an expression of sorrow, longing, and hatred; Stephen didn't realise just how much he looked like his father until he found one of the few photos that Kitty hadn't burnt. He had inherited Jamison's unkempt hair and storm-blue eyes, even his smile. No wonder his mother had despised him sometimes, having to see a daily reminder of the man she'd loved so much and lost. At night, he would curl up in bed with Thalia huddled in his arms, wondering what he'd done to make her hate him and convincing himself that he wasn't crying when he went to sleep.

It wasn't until he was seven that one of his teachers puzzled out that something wasn't quite right with little Stephen Hart, the quietest boy in class. By then Kitty had eased off the bottle, but she was also coming home wired with manic energy, glassy eyed and sporting small bruises and pinprick marks in the creases of each elbow. Thalia had clung to his back in the form of a sloth as a social worker packed up all his clothes in a suitcase and another sat at the table with Kitty, having his mother fill out paperwork that signed over legal guardianship of him to his grandparents, Kitty's parents.

It took a week of living with Horace and Alisa Dunne for Stephen to wish desperately that he still lived with an alcoholic junkie.

His grandparents never raised a hand to him, but sometimes he wished they would, just do _something_ to show they even registered his existence. His mother might've looked at him with something very close to hatred, but at least she looked at him. Horace and Alisa _ignored_ him. Even their dæmons, a porcupine and an Irish setter just as bitter and cold as their people, ignored Thalia as if she was no more than a fly buzzing around their ears. They blamed him for what had happened to their precious daughter. If it wasn't for him, Kitty would still be an Olympian with medals around her neck instead of an addict always scrabbling for her next fix. He might have had clean clothes every day and food that he didn't have to make himself, but he didn't get hugs or bedtime stories. There weren't any holidays, no Christmas presents or fireworks on New Year's. Stephen actually forgot that most people celebrate their birthdays, especially kids, with things like cake and presents and friends over for games.

It was then that his fascination with hunting and tracking really started. The only respite he had from the frigidity of being in the Dunne home was the library two blocks down. He'd read books about Africa and the Americas and Asia and Europe, saw pictures of grasslands and forests and savannahs and mountains, of lions and tigers and giraffes and elephants, animals of all size and shape. He'd told Thalia that one day, they'd go places like that, far away, and see all sorts of things, when they were older and could look after themselves. There'd be no drunken Kitty and growling Aeris, no frosty-eyed Horace and disdainful Clarissa, no indifferent Alisa and bristling Mikhail. It'd be just them, Stephen and Thalia.

The year after that, when he was twelve, his dæmon settled into her permanent form. Thalia had a very strange form by the standards of most people. Stephen had seen the proper animal first in a book he'd found in the library and then in real life on an expedition in Africa. They weren't so big, maybe 36 kilos and about 110 centimetres, but he'd seen a group of them drag a fully-grown wildebeest.

She was an African wild dog. The Latin name, _Lycaon pictus,_ meant "painted wolf" and her name, Thalia, was Greek and meant "festive," which was quite fitting, as her fur was mottled in irregular patterns of brown, black, white, and yellow, like a tortoiseshell cat without the style. It wasn't just that she had a strange form, it was that her form actually _looked_ odd. Aside from the colouring, she had a lean, sleek body and long legs like a greyhound, though her tail was surprisingly fluffy considering the rest of her fur was quite short, and comically large, rounded ears that were almost as big as her head. It made her look scruffy, and no amount of baths and brushing could change that. According to one of the swots on his secondary school's rugby team, Thalia looked like someone had "taken a greyhound, dumped half a paint set on her, tacked on a feather duster for a tail, and gave her a pair of Mickey Mouse ears to boot."

If anything, Thalia's form made his grandparents dislike him even more. It was bad enough they had to take care of a child they never wanted and didn't even care about, he had to have the weird dæmon as well. But Stephen didn't care. He loved his Thalia, and he liked to think that she had settled in that form because they were going to go places far away, that they were hunters, explorers.

He moved out of the Dunne house the day he turned 18, and thanks to a trust fund set up by Jamison before his death, Stephen had the money to travel all the places he'd dreamt of and read about. His sharpshooting skill grew as did his competency in tracking and hunting, fitting right into it as though he was born to. But it wasn't quite enough. As exciting as it all was, he also had pursuits in science, in microbiology and evolution, so when he was 23, he and Thalia returned to London. They were as lonely there as they were as children. There were girlfriends, but they went as soon as they'd come, and any mates he had were really just drinking partners in the pub on match days. That aching place that housed the never-ending loneliness in his chest didn't go away.

At least, not until he got into Central Metropolitan University and met the infamous teaching duo there, Professors Nick and Helen Cutter.


	4. Abby and Leofas

Abby Maitland had a fairly typical childhood, at least for one growing up in the less 'family-friendly' districts of London. The kind of neighbourhood where people added deadbolts to their doors, where windows more often than not had tarp and plywood instead of glass, where graffiti covered the walls of buildings so thick it was hard to tell what colour the original building was. Whenever she walked the last half-block from the bus stop to her home, her own beloved dæmon, Leofas, would turn to something big and growly to protect her, lumbering along in her footsteps in the form of a lion or a bear. It wasn't so bad when her father was alive. Abby wouldn't lie; when he was alive, she was definitely a daddy's girl. He would walk her to the park, play her imaginary games, and even his dæmon, a beautiful red Irish setter named Ania, would play with Leofas.

Yes, Michael Maitland was a good man, but he was no fool either. He taught his precious daughter one of the most important lessons in life: trust was not something to be given away like penny candy. It had to be earned, gradually, through time and trial. People, as a whole, weren't trustworthy. It was simply a fact, one that Michael knew well. He was a bartender at a fairly popular pub, but seeing as how the Maitlands didn't quite have the funds for a car, he walked to and from work every day, ten blocks each way. Abby remembered watching him get ready for work after she came home from school. He always carried with him a small bag that held his lunch, and when he walked home, he'd carry his tips for the night in it, rumpled pound notes folded up and held with a rubber band.

One night, Michael brought her to work with him, letting her sit on a stool behind the counter and watch him. And as they walked home, a man stopped them. He was a thin, unpleasant-looking fellow with a gnarled black rat dæmon curled on his shoulder. "What's in the bag, old man?" he'd hissed poisonously. Abby had been afraid of the man and his red-eyed rat dæmon, but her father had been calm. Unmovable. Whilst she and Leofas hid close to his side, Ania standing protectively in front of them, Michael opened his lunch bag to show the man it's contents: the half of a sandwich left over from lunch, the folded-up notes secured in their rubber band...and a loaded 9mm Beretta. The man with the rat dæmon had gone the colour of cottage cheese and let them by without another word.

He died the same year, three weeks before Abby's fifth birthday. Their entire world simply seemed to fall apart then, knowing she'd never walk to the park with Michael's big hand wrapped around hers, that Leofas would never again have another bout of playful romping or hide-and-seek with Ania. She'd screamed and sobbed, and Leofas had flitted from form to form in his grief, shrieking with her. After that, her mother had changed in the worst way. She started wearing clothes that were offensive even to Abby's five-year-old point of view, coming home at late hours. Before Abby turned six, her mother had remarried a man named David and was pregnant with her soon-to-be half-brother Jack.

Abby and Leofas disliked David from the start. He was a small, wiry man, nothing like the towering, well-built Michael, and his own dæmon, Rissa, was a bat, an ugly, flat-faced thing with too-big ears and long yellow-white teeth. Any time Rissa would come near them, Leofas would become a wildcat and hiss up at her ferociously. The only good thing in her life then was Jack and his wee little dæmon, Harriet. It became her mission to teach Jack the same way that Michael had taught her, even though she often couldn't stay focused, drawn into his playful antics. She would indulge him in as many games of hide-and-seek and peekaboo and knights-and-dragons as he wanted, with Leofas often playing the role as a fearful 'dragon,' willing to be tackled and vanquished by Harriet.

But she still never trusted David or Rissa. He'd never done anything to earn it from her.

Her mistrust of her stepfather was well-proven. When she was ten and Jack had just turn five, David hit her for the first but not the last time, a backhanded slap that made her head ring and her mouth taste of blood. Leofas had hissed and spat, flicking to the form of a wildcat, lean and harsh, over her protectively, but Rissa had showed her fangs. Soon after that, David and even her own mother were beating both Abby and Jack, especially once they got drunk together, their favourite activity. Harriet would whimper in fear and pain mixed, huddling against Leofas as Abby protected her little brother against the very worst of the abuse. Sometimes it would hurt to move if they both went at it, but she learnt to control it, to put all her hurt and anger behind a wall in her heart, to put on a mask because it only egged David on further when he saw how much it hurt her. Leofas hissed whenever Rissa came close, curling himself protectively close to Abby.

When she was twelve, he settled in the form of a handsome pine marten with dark brown fur on his back and sides and head, his throat and belly a creamy golden colour. He liked to curl himself around her neck like a living fur collar, curling his tail over her neck and tucking his head under her chin. It soon became a habit of hers to reach up and stroke his fur whenever deep in thought or worried, rubbing behind his rounded little ears comfortingly. She wondered what she ever would have done without her beloved Leo, her own dear soul. And one day, after her mother demanded she clean out the dining hall closet, Abby found a small box, tucked far in the back, covered in dust; it wasn't a big box, but it _was_ wrapped in bright coloured wrapping paper with a little tag that read _To Abby and Leo, from Dad and Ania. Happy birthday, jellybaby._ Her throat had gotten tight seeing that, the pet name that Michael had always given her. Her fingers trembled as she tore open the wrapping and opened the box. Inside lay a flick knife, a bigger one than most people carried, with a polished white wooden handle; engraved in the handle were her initials: A. S. M.

"Our birthday present," whispered Leofas in her ear, peering over her shoulder, claws curled in her jacket to balance himself. "We never got it." The year that Michael Maitland died, Abby had never gotten her present from him.

She picked up the knife, curling her small, sure fingers around the polished wooden hilt, and when she hit the little switch, the blade sprang out with a lethal _snick,_ the blade gleaming bright and silver in the dim light of the closet. And she'd folded it back up, slipped it in her pocket, and had slept with it every night afterwards and carried it with her wherever she walked. She was fourteen, and after Jack had gone to sleep and her mother had passed out cold on the bed, David had come staggering towards her, reeking of alcohol and something else worse. He'd been drunk enough to try and put his hand up her skirt, but only once. Only once, because the moment his hand touched her thigh, she'd pulled out her knife and held it against David's throat, Leofas crouched on her arm with teeth bared at Rissa furiously. He'd pulled back from her slowly, bloodshot eyes wide and fearful, and staggered off.

Trust had to be earned, and he had proven beyond a doubt that she was right distrusting him.

Not four months after that, Miranda, Abby's aunt and Michael's sister, arrived armed with a lawyer, a worker from Children's Services, and a police officer. Things moved quickly after that. Both David and her mother were arrested and charged with a list of things as long as her arm, Abby and Jack were signed over to Miranda's custody, and they moved to live with her. No more having to carry a knife on the walk to school. No more having to grow eyes out the back of her head. No more black eyes and split lips and bloody noses. But she still kept her father's advice. Nobody was to be trusted for no reason, not until they earned it from her.

Jack grew apart from her more and more as he got older, and Harriet settled in the form of a loud, raucous crow. Still, even though her brother separated himself from her, Abby worked, bound and determined to make herself something better than what her mother had been. She'd gotten her degree in herpetology and a job at Wellington Zoo looking after the reptiles she loved. But it wasn't until she met Ben, a young boy whose own dæmon still hadn't settled, and the bizarre, exotic-looking Rex, and ventured to the Forest of Dean that she became acquainted with the most bizarre people who somehow, miraculously, became the closest friends she'd ever had in her life, people that earned her trust faster than anyone else ever had. It was strange and more than a little scary, but she learnt to love it.

Connor Temple and his dæmon, a black wolf named Akela, somehow managed to be living on her couch, much to her and Leofas's frustration and irritation. The awkward, fumbling student making constant passes at her soon made her want to strangle the life out of him, even as he tried to endear himself to her with puppy dog eyes and awkward flirting, she kept reminding herself, over and over. Trust had to be earned, not given. And Connor had not earned it. Not yet.


	5. Claudia and Larne

People expected Claudia Brown's dæmon to settle as something small and delicate and ladylike, the way she was. They just didn't _get_ her, not really. She wasn't just small and soft and pretty. She was more than that. Larne knew it too, and when people made remarks like that, he liked to change forms to something big and predatory just to throw them off.

Her parents never mistreated her in the slightest way, but they also treated her like she was eternally five years old and a little china-doll princess to be spoilt and petted. Sometimes she was certain she'd go up the wall mad from it. Larne, as was her dæmon's name, always flitted from one form to another, trying out every shape imaginable in hopes of perhaps determining ahead of time what he would settle as. Claudia found it hilarious, to watch him flick from shape to shape, then flop down on her lap or in her hair, grumbling in irritation as he declared he'd made no progress. It was always amusing and never failed to make her smile. Whenever she got particularly frustrated with everyone _else_ speculating on how _her_ dæmon would settle, he would do it on purpose, finding the silliest forms he could to make her giggle and shake off the gloominess, even for a little while.

Her family wasn't particularly wealthy, though they were high-end middle class enough for her to go to a good private school. Claudia was grateful for the opportunity, she truly was, but _God,_ did she ever resent those bloody _uniforms._ Larne had nearly fallen off her desk laughing the first time she had to put on the pleated skirt and navy blouse with its Peter Pan collar and crest-stitched breast pocket, the chunky black Mary Janes and prerequisite white socks. She'd retaliated by flicking him across the room, seeing as he was in dragonfly shape. Grumbling again, he'd become a gecko and clung to her hair like a clip, pressing tiny feet in her scalp to keep balance as she walked.

In school, she'd seen dæmons of every shape and size and sort, some settled, some still changing. She was younger than most of her peers; even though it was only a few months, it was still long enough for her to be considered a 'baby' by the upperclassmen. One girl in particular was vicious in her harrowing. Claudia still remembered her and still somewhat loathed her, too. Her name was Cecilia Darrowman, and her own dæmon, Liwgar, was a peacock just as flashy and vapid as she was. The large bird liked to shake out his tall, brilliant tail feathers just to show off his colours. Cecilia constantly hounded Claudia because she was younger, because Larne hadn't settled, because her parents weren't rolling in money like the Darrowmans were. Once constant sneer was that when Larne did settle, it'd probably be in a form, "just as stupid and dull as you are, Brown." For such an empty-headed ditz, Cecilia _could_ be vicious.

Cecilia Darrowman and Liwgar aside, she really did like school. It was fun. She made friends with people that were still her friends even when she grew up and got her job in the Home Office. Molly Hooper had become Claudia's steadfast friend from day one, a shy, quiet-natured girl with warm brown eyes and soft brunette hair she liked to keep up in a braid tied at the end with ribbon. Her own dæmon, Laghu, was a bumblebee bat, the smallest sort of bat, only as long as Claudia's little finger, and liked to curl up in the collar of Molly's blouse. Larne liked to take on the same form when the girls were together. They were still friends, too, even though Molly and Laghu now worked in a morgue as a pathologist.

Larne didn't properly settle until she was thirteen. Just as her parents hoped, he was a bird. But _unlike_ what her parents hoped, he was not a small songbird or a sparrow. Claudia's beloved soul took the form of a kestrel. He was a hunting bird with wicked sharp talons and a hooked beak meant to rip and tear. He was small for a hunting bird, though, only about ten inches long, and had blue-tinged wings and head, a rufous-coloured back, and a pale belly speckled with darker spots. She loved it. Larne was just as she was, even though nobody else believed them. Small, perhaps, but _not_ soft and _not_ delicate.

"Just like you, Claudia," Molly would say, "little and colourful but tough all the same."

Larne would often fly around her head, coasting lightly on sleek blue wings, or else be perched firmly on her shoulder, his talons gripping but not puncturing her skin; he was always careful of how much pressure he exerted. From there, he was close enough to her to keep an eye on everything whilst she worked and to whisper in her ear things she might have missed without his sharp eyes. She liked to stroke his feathers with fingertips when she felt particularly tired or frustrated, the electric tingle of connection always lightening her spirits, and he would nip affectionately at her fingers.

When she joined the Home Office, slowly but surely working her way up, Larne kept a perch near the door, a little further away from her than she liked, but that way, he could keep a sharp ear and eye out for anyone approaching, protective of her as he always was. It was around that time that she met Jeremy and his dæmon, a vervet monkey, Jordana. They had dated for nearly two years before getting engaged, though she broke it off soon after that, after finding out that he'd been maintaining an affair for several months. It'd been all she could do to keep Larne from pecking Jordana's eyes right out, her always-protective dæmon.

But, as it turnt out, she actually was grateful that she and Jeremy hadn't worked out. If they had, well, then several months later, after she'd been given her newest task, she'd never have had the chance to walk up and kiss the fair-haired Scotsman with the snow leopard dæmon at the hotel bar.

* * *

 **A/N: on dæmon names. _Thalia,_ in Greek, does mean blooming or rich festivity** **. _Liwgar_ is Welsh for colourful, and _Laghu_ is Hindi for miniature. _Akela_ is also Hindi for alone or solitary, as well as the name of the alpha wolf in Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book." Just some fun facts.**


	6. James and Hester

It was a constant source of amusement to everyone around them that James Lester had a dæmon whose name rhymed with his. Hester and Lester. Hilarious. He would never have it any other way, though. They would never admit it aloud, but she was the one who came up with all the good ideas. Most of what he had he couldn't have ever achieved without the clever machinations of his dæmon.

They had been born into the aristocracy, there was no denying that. His parents names were still spoken with a note of reverence even though they had both retired years ago. His mother, Viola Lester, was an economical genius and worked analysing the financial markets, managing billions of pounds in private hedge funds; he believed sometimes that she and that ridiculous man-child Connor Temple would have gotten on like a house on fire. His father, however, was a chemist and co-owned Angel Pharmaceuticals with his younger brother, Lester's uncle.

Even as a child, Hester never took the form of any sort of dog. Ever. Though it was more of a wives' tale than fact, dogs tended to be the dæmons of the lower, working class. An old prejudice, maybe, but one that didn't die easily, considering how often it proved to be true. Two of the trademarks of the canine species were obedience and serving their masters without question, not something befitting the child of two of London's wealthiest people. Beside, he never liked dogs very much, and neither had she. They simply were not appealing animals.

Rather, she preferred the shape of either a cat or a bird, her favourites being either a snowy owl or a lynx. If she was in a particularly benevolent mood, she might change to a white fox for a time, but that was still too close to a dog for her liking and never stayed that way long. Lizards weren't too likeable either. Snakes were just downright eerie. In his mind, if didn't have legs yet could still move, it was unnatural, and what was a lizard if not a snake with legs? So it was always birds or cats for Hester, and he was just dandy with that.

When he was thirteen, she settled in the form of a cat, an Egyptian Mau. She was sleek and silvery-grey, with small black marks dappling her pelt, her eyes the same grey-green as his. Sometimes he felt like he could be a super villain in an old Bond film, sitting in an office with Hester in his lap, stroking her with one hand whilst smoking a cigar with the other. Well, not actually. Smoking was a disgusting habit. But the thought was amusing. The rest of his school career afterwards was normal, as it was. He passed with flying colours, as was expected of him. He lacked his mother's keen intellect with mathematics and definitely his father's uncanny gift in chemistry. What he did have, though, was his own innate skill in the finicky maneouvering of politics. Once he'd completed his college degree (2:1 from Oxford, of course) he began his career in the Home Office.

It was rather fabulous. The complex web of inter-politics was endlessly fascinating, and it gave him a little thrill of pleasure when he knew he'd gotten one up on someone else. Hester was always there to keep him from getting too sure of himself, to always make sure he kept one eye open. She was the one to watch his back so nobody else could stab him in it. She murmured secrets in his ear, having taken them from the whispers of other dæmons, helping him, helping _them,_ keep one step ahead. Lester might have been clever, but it was Hester that really made things happen for him.

And then the anomalies happened. And the big toothy dinosaur. And the smaller dinosaur that ruined one of his favourite suit jackets. And the civilians that somehow managed to stumble right into the middle of it. Oh, that lot, those bloody civilians made his blood pressure rise. And Cutter, dear God, Cutter made him contemplate ritual suicide, that...scruffy, stubborn, insufferable, argumentative _git_ of a Professor, him and his bloody dæmon.

"Oh, now, James, play nice," Hester purred, slinking across the desk to perch on his knee, flicking her tail at him.

"Play nice? _Play nice?_ Cutter's a madman!"

"Perhaps. But also useful. Without him, the others, they would clear this place like the French army. We do not have to like him, but we do need him."

He grumbled irately, even though he knew she was right. Dæmons were infinitely useful that way. They had a detached point of view considering the rest of the world, evaluating things and individuals as how they could potentially be useful or harmful to their human half. Lester could dislike Cutter all he wanted to, but her view of him would remain untainted. They _did_ need him. Hart was attached to the man at the bloody hip, Temple followed him like a puppy, and Maitland had some peculiar faith in him, too. To cut ties with Cutter would be to cut ties with all of them, and though Lester was loathe to say it, Cutter _was_ the best man for the job, him and his circus act. "Fine," he snapped.

Hester purred softly, nuzzling her head against his palm. "That's what I thought."

"Oh, hush, you cheeky brat," he said, but he scratched behind her ears anyways.

He didn't know what he would ever do without his dæmon.


	7. Jenny and Varro

Jennifer Rose-Marie Lewis saw her brother more than she saw her parents.

Trinity and Charles Lewis had no time for their children until it was important. Until they were due to make a collective appearance at whatever new socialite soiree appeared, Jenny and Chris were just two people that happened to live in the same house as they did until the day they turned 18. Her mother was always out at some fashion show, modeling, working on her art and everything else. Her father was managing the finances of his companies or out on one of his affairs.

Her only real companion was Varro, as it should be – dæmons were, above all else, companions. When they were children, Varro would imitate her parents' dæmons; it was her belief then that if she was like them, they might actually show her some semblance of attention. Charles Lewis had a magnificent golden tamarin named Laressa whilst Trinity's was a mute swan by name of Vitri. Varro tried out both forms often, though he was never quite so beautiful as they were. It never worked, anyways.

Jenny's idea of love had been altered from a very young age. Most little girls dreamt of meeting their own Prince Charming, who'd whisk them off their feet and away into the sunset, where they'd marry in a beautiful castle and live happily ever after. They had their idea of love at first sight, being loyal to one person forever. She and Varro knew better. Her parents didn't love each other. They were cordial, at most. To this day, she couldn't remember seeing Charles kiss his wife or Trinity telling her husband, 'I love you'. Sometimes she wondered how they ever had kids at all. Their marriage was one carefully planned and thought out, akin to a sound business deal. Trinity's family were old blue bloods, with connections to the Royal family and beyond, but little money to boast of after so many years. Charles's family had wealth up to their ears, but they lacked strings to pull. By marriage, Charles gained his wife's pull in the political world, and Trinity could maintain the lavish lifestyle her station demanded. Love was not a factor.

So, by the time she was nine, Jenny and Varro both knew that her future husband was not going to be a Prince Charming that swept her off her feet. He was going to be a carefully selected individual, approved by her parents, having met certain requirements: attractiveness, breeding, money, politics, and so forth. They would have at least two children, to be raised by governesses and nannies, of course, and live in a manor house with etiquette classes in the Plaza, summers in Southampton, private boarding schools, and designer clothes.

Granted, she didn't always agree with that. Varro had listened to her enraged, bitter protests to their preplanned life, bristling and spitting with her, though only in the privacy of their own bedroom where such impropriety could be kept hidden. She had tried her hand at rebellion, just to see if they would notice her. She had nearly been arrested for vandalism twice, and once she'd been given an ASBO when she got caught tagging a building. Varro had always protested that bit, her eternal voice of reason, but why have a voice of reason if you weren't going to ignore it once in a while? A few words from her father, though, and it'd never happened.

When she was twelve, Varro settled. He took the form of a handsome silver fox, his fur a sleek, silvery grey-white down his back and face, with black fur on his muzzle, ears, underbelly, legs, and paws. He would always sit in her lap whenever she was sitting down, trot smoothly beside her feet as she walked. She loved him with all her heart.

A part of her, though, was slightly unnerved. Trinity Lewis's favourite winter coat was made of silver fox fur.

Once, out of curiosity, she did a little digging into her dæmon's form. Foxes were symbols of cunning and wiliness as well as mischievousness, but they weren't always evil. In ancient Peru, the fox was seen as a warrior that'd use his mind to do battle. A Finnish myth featured a fox's intelligence besting both the malevolence of the wolf and the brute strength of the bear. In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean culture, the fox was considered the dæmon of certain goddesses and deities.

"Well, aren't we just the special ones?" Varro asked, weaving through her ankles and grinning up at her; she loved her dæmon.

As she grew older, she gave up on gaining attention through childish misbehaviour. It wouldn't do a damned thing for either of them. Instead, she decided to go a different route. She didn't immediately get married to some well-groomed show pony as soon as she graduated. She got a job instead. The idea of Charles and Trinity's daughter actually working was a laughable one, until it was a reality. She fit into the role of Public Relations like she was born to it, and it was there that she truly did realise her nature was that of the fox. Sly and wily, able to spin any lie and make it believable.

Refusing to give up her job soon resulted in a magnificent row with her mother, which Jenny eventually won. She was not about to be some good little trophy wife; it would drive her up the wall. Varro was not a domesticated animal, and neither was she.

Trinity was only slightly placated when Jenny began seeing Michael, her soon-to-be fiancé, and his gorgeous Siamese cat dæmon, Nira. Michael was well-off, with a good job and good breeding, up to standards.

But then, of course, came the job offer to work in a highly secretive government operation dubbed the ARC, though nobody told her exactly what her job _was_ until she'd arrived and met one James Lester, a man with a reputation that proceeded him. His dæmon was that of a sleek, cool Egyptian Mau by name of Hester. The look on his face positively dared her to make some sort of joke about their names. Jenny knew better than to piss off the boss on the first day. Varro liked Hester, liked her professionalism and composure; she had a feeling that she and Mr. Lester would get on quite well.

But then she was introduced to one scruffy, unkempt Scotsman by name of Professor Nick Cutter and his snow leopard dæmon, and all her and Varro's hopes of the new job going smoothly went straight out the window.


End file.
